Pedro Almodóvar and Penélope Cruz

It's six years since director Pedro Almodóvar and actor Penélope Cruz worked together on All About My Mother. They talk about the rehearsal process, their friendship and the many happy returns of their latest film, Volver

There are no limits to the heart she puts into her work ... Pedro Almodóvar (right) describes Penélope Cruz (left) at the NFTPhotograph: Shaun Curry

Maria Delgado: Penélope and Pedro, welcome to the NFT this evening. I'd like to start with a discussion about Volver. Volver in Spanish means to go back or to return. I think there's a sense of returning for both of you in this film - for you Pedro, returning to La Mancha and some of the themes of your earlier work, and to some of the stars, such as Carmen Maura and Penélope, with whom you haven't worked in a while. And for you, Penélope, a return to Spanish-language cinema and to working with Pedro. Perhaps you'd both like to talk to us about the sense of returning on this film.

Pedro Almodóvar (with Maria Delgado translating): In effect, there are many returns in this movie. The ones you mentioned - I returned to working with Carmen and Penélope, and I returned to my roots and shot there. In fact that was the main thing for me; that was really very moving, more so than I thought. And also the sense of coming back from beyond, in the character that Carmen Maura plays in the film. But also Volver, if you are familiar with Argentinian music, is a very famous tango from the 30s sung by Carlos Gardel. The song is very important to the movie because it is the song taught by the mother, Carmen's character, to her very beautiful child, Penélope's character, to present during an audition to become a movie star. And when Raimunda sings Volver, it is also very moving because then the mother, Irene, knows that Raimunda remembers her, because she is singing the song that she taught her when she was very young. That was the moment when the mother tried to make her, and one assumes that she was a beautiful child, into a movie star. You know the scene towards the end when the mother says to the daughter, "Have you always had such big bosoms?" and the daughter says, "Yes, since I was a child." So she had been a very attractive child, and the mother had tried to make her even more beautiful for the talent audition. And the mother, without realising it, was creating an irresistible temptation for the father, and he fell into temptation. So Volver is full of meaning.

MD: What about for you, Penélope?

Penélope Cruz: For me it was also a comeback, as you say, in terms of working in my language again after a few years, which I had really missed, and also in terms of working in my country and spending time there. We worked for six months on this movie - we rehearsed for three months and then shot for three. So I felt very blessed to be able to do this in my country, surrounded by my friends and family. But the main comeback, [the thing] that I was really missing, was the feeling of working with him. It had been five years of not working together, and though we stayed in contact because we are very good friends, for me it felt like 20 years, it was too long. I was always comparing everything to working with him, and you shouldn't do that. Once you try it, you get addicted, you're hooked forever. So in every movie that I made, I was always thinking, "What's he going to think of this one?" He's always really present in everything I do.

MD: Did you write the role of Raimunda for Penélope?

PA: She knew the story since the beginning, from the first note that I wrote. But the story always changes a lot during the development. At first I had thought of Penélope for the character of the granddaughter. But during the writing, and even when I had the first draft, I started to think that the granddaughter wasn't important enough - I wanted Penélope to have a bigger part. So I thought she's very young, but biologically she can be a mother and have a 15-year-old daughter. So I rewrote the script five or six times with her in my mind as the mother, Raimunda.

MD: And did you have Carmen Maura in mind for Raimunda's mother?

PA: Usually I don't write the characters with actors in mind. In this case, I wanted to work with Penélope and she was included in the project from the beginning. But for Carmen, the only character that I wrote with specifically her in mind was Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. And Antonio [Banderas], the only role I wrote with him in mind was Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! I worked with them a lot of times, but I decided that I would only put faces on characters when I finished the script. However, Carmen entered my mind when I was writing the moment the ghost [of Irene] appears, and it changed everything that I had written before. At the beginning, the movie was more a comedy about this neighbourhood in Madrid. But when I wrote the ghost's first appearance, I thought this was the story that I was looking for. The character of the ghost started to devour all the rest, converting the central theme of the movie into that of the relationship between the mother and her daughter. So the idea of working with Carmen came immediately as I was writing the first draft.

MD: You've mentioned that you rehearsed for three months before shooting - what did that actually involve?

PA: I'm obsessed with the musicality of the dialogues. The first thing I did was take them to a position where I recognised myself. I've realised that my work with actors is more like that of a theatre director rather than a film director. So we begin by reading around a table, and that's how I establish the tone of the dialogues and what's between the lines. Then these readings become rehearsals, but not on location, and during these readings, I adapt the dialogues to the actors and actresses who are taking on those roles. And I also prepare them physically for the role - I usually have a team of people who work with me on this - but I like to be at the forefront of this, of making them [look like] what the character looks like. This is very important for the actors: to be able to look in the mirror and see that this is the character. My image of Penélope in this was of a housewife, very strong, fighting. But at certain times, and this is something Penélope's brought to the role, she also has an almost childlike vulnerability. There's no tradition in Spanish cinema of splendid housewives - normally they're short and fat. So I took as my image the neo-realist housewives of 1950s Italian cinema - Sophia Loren, Anna Magnani, Claudia Cardinale. So it was essential to give Penélope a hairstyle that was backcombed and had height, because she has a very small face.

MD: I think he's forgotten that you're here, Penélope.

PC: No, I'm used to this.

PA: I was very influenced by the makeup of Claudia Cardinale in a film where she had very dark eyeliner. As soon as we hit on that for Penélope, everything changed. It was also very important to have an ample cleavage enhanced by strategically placed medallions, because that's one of the key images of Spanish motherhood, and motherhood is one of the key themes of this film. It was also very important that this woman have an ample arse. The arse is a symbol of optimism. I'm really sorry for those who do not possess a bottom but they can always add something to it. The only false thing that we did was to construct a new arse for her, so that she would have this shape. It wasn't just about the physical thing, it was also about the spirit of the person: Penélope had trained in dance, and so tends to walk upright, very much in the air. But for the character, we wanted someone very grounded, somebody weighed down by life. And an ample arse helps you to be weighed down and be grounded. So rehearsals are part of all this.

MD: Penélope, can we hear it from your side now?

PC: I wish I had him next to me every time I get asked that question about the fake arse. Journalists write that the producers forced me to wear a false arse because I didn't have a big enough one. They didn't understand anything about this. Just as Pedro has explained, it's true, the day I tried that on, I thought I have to keep this and take it everywhere with me, because it would make me walk differently. And it's true, because of the way it made me move, something happened to my energy and I felt more down-to-earth; it really happened. It's like when you find the right shoes for a character. But it's always tricky to talk about these things in an interview because you can sound a little crazy, so I wish I had him with me every time I get asked that question. I've been asked that question about 50 times, all with different theories, and the next question is usually about anorexia or bulimia - they get it so wrong.

PA: The other thing I did was I tried to get the texture and tone of the voice lower. And changing the register of the voice, that takes time, but I thought that it was important that she, as a mother, spoke with a lower register of voice. So preparations are very exhausting, as you can see.

MD [to PC]: How different was working on Volver to Live Flesh for you? In Live Flesh you played a teenage mother, a prostitute giving birth. That was a very small cameo role but in many ways it stole the film, it was an extraordinary opening to the film.

PA: It's like a set-piece, you can separate it from the rest of the movie and it works like a short. It was eight minutes and I have to say she was wonderful in that. Stephen Frears told me that he asked her to be in Hi-Lo Country after seeing that eight minutes.

MD [to PC]: Pedro's like your agent as well as your director.

PC: He's my everything.

PA: I'm telling you this because I want you to know that I'm not the only one who finds her so wonderful in a movie. That moment was set in the 70s - I wanted the child to be born under an unlucky star. I chose to set it on a certain night - the last state of exception announced by the Spanish minister Fraga during the Franco dictatorship - because I wanted that child to be born with very bad luck, under a very bad star. All the clothes that we found for her were second-hand and authentic - but when we put the clothes on her, because it was trendy at the time to dress in the style of the late 60s and early 70s, she looked fashionable; she didn't look like a prostitute, she looked very modern. We didn't know what to do - the clothes were authentic, they were really ugly, but she looked fantastic. So we put a wart on her face to make her uglier.

PC: And I had a little moustache, too.

PA: Yes, that too.

MD: But that was what really worked about the film, it looked like you were casting Penélope against type. She had been playing very glamorous, sexy women, and here she was in a very different role. It showed that you could play something very different and play it very well.

PA: I was really impressed with her after shooting and discovering all these ways to make her more vulgar, more ordinary and not sophisticated. There are no limits to the heart that she puts into her work. Once she's in contact with the spirit of the character, it's very impressive how far she goes with it. I think that I wanted to be a director because I wanted to work with actors - when an actor gets something for the first time, it's like a miracle, and the director is the first witness of that. That is an incredible privilege, and that gives you a kind of pleasure that's addictive. And I experienced an incredible pleasure on Live Flesh, just watching her working for the first time.

MD [to PC]: Was it like that for you on Live Flesh?

PC: Live Flesh was like a dream come true for me. I became an actor so that one day I might have the opportunity to work with him. Live Flesh was my first experience with him, and it was a really beautiful and intense week. We connected immediately and communicated easily. That movie changed my career in many ways - I had never received offers for that kind of character and it was only eight minutes, but after that movie, I got offers like the one from Stephen and for a lot of things in Spain. They would never have been brave enough to consider me because not everybody has his imagination. So it really changed my career for the better.

MD: And then in All About My Mother, you again cast her against type, in the sense that she was playing a nun, and that had its own challenges. How soon in that process did you cast Penélope in that role?

PA: Well, the nun is a lot closer to her character, because she's a very nice girl. But she's also very adventurous. I read in a newspaper about a bunch of nuns who lived in a house and worked with transvestites and prostitutes and drug addicts, trying to help them to establish new lives for themselves. I read that some of these nuns went out to where these transvestites and drug addicts were working and would take out syringes for them; they were incredibly brave because they would get into arguments and discussions with the clients of these people they were working with. I saw all these characteristics in Penélope's character. I wanted a mixture of generosity and innocence, with a little insensitivity and a little craziness. It was actually very easy - we didn't have to change much. The important thing was that she must be very emotional and that she give of that emotion, and the tremendous thing about Penélope is that she has this emotional bank.

MD: And we see that in Volver - we see a real mixture between extraordinary emotions, and you capture those moments when she goes very suddenly from one emotion to another. Was that difficult to do? Was that part of what the rehearsal involved?

PA: She can do it. If she wasn't an actor, I think she would be a madwoman. Because of that very immediate emotion. I'll let her explain it.

PC: He knows me very well. He's been one of my best friends for 10 years so I feel very safe when he says something like that. With this character, I felt able to let the monsters out, to release a lot of things and do something with those feelings that sometimes, even to me, are so contradictory. We all go through that, and I am sometimes like a rollercoaster - a little bit like Raimunda. I'm much more like Raimunda than many other characters I've played that are more sort of monotoned. He knows that and I trust him so much, so I was able to go to those places that were very scary emotionally, but I went trusting because he was always there for us. His generosity was amazing. So we'd arrive on the set with a lot of fear every morning, but our mission was that Pedro had to go home happy at the end of the day. He must not regret that he had that faith in us. All of us actresses would hide in a corner and have conversations about this: "How scared are you today?" "Terrified." "Me, too." "Okay, let's go." But in front of him, we would pretend to be very secure about ourselves. It was great to feel like that again. It was like the first day at school. We had three months of rehearsal - thank God we had that; which director gives you that? - three months, six hours a day, taking care of his actors. That's why you get spoiled because his is a completely different way of working. And the character lives on inside you after those three months of rehearsal. Then you go on the set - you still have that fear and that excitement, but it's a fear that's worth it, because you are full of all the emotions that you need to understand to serve that character on the set. Everyday was so challenging, but it was one step at a time, and all through it, there was that mission: he must go home happy.

PA: Thank you very much, I really appreciate it. But to demonstrate that emotional capacity within the same shot is really amazing, I don't know how you do it. She can be screaming and then immediately be crying like a child. I don't know if you're even conscious that this is a very strange capacity.

[audience laughs]

PA: I mean it is very strange for the rest of us and is something very difficult to do.

PC: That's what we as actors get asked all the time and it is very difficult to put in words. We are aware of it and intellectually we cannot even understand it. For me, it has to be full of truth and it has to connect. I don't do substitution games and I don't think about somebody else because that's really dangerous and you can really go crazy. Just find the truth that connects with you, and Pedro helps us so much with that. Everything, in every scene, we had material to grab for us to feel connected to those characters and to the truth. It's so beautiful when you have the material, a script like that, that you find inspiration everywhere.

MD: Is it different for you to be working in your maternal language again?

PC: It's different, yes, it's a relief.

MD: Do you feel like a different actor when you work in your native tongue?

PC: When I work in a different language, I feel the extra tension - of working with facial muscles that are not used to making those sounds in English or other languages, and of having your teacher next to you - it's very much like a torture sometimes, the process of trying to get rid of an accent. So you get that tension from the preparation, and tension is not a friend of acting. So, of course I feel very relieved working in my language, of not having that obstacle there that can often close off the emotions. So this is what I'm doing, working on it so that I can work on an English-language set with more freedom, without thinking about the dialogue so much.

MD [to PA]: When Bad Education came out, you spoke about women inspiring you to write comedy and men to write tragedy. Do you still think that's the case?

PA: Yes, I'm conscious of that. I don't know why - maybe that should be a question from a psychiatrist. But it's true that when I write about women, I can use more humour than if I write about the male universe. Perhaps it's because that's the gender I belong to, perhaps I'm more interested to show the darkest places of myself, and I don't joke about it. But it's true. So after Bad Education, I wanted to go back to the female universe that I feel much more comfortable in.

MD: The great Spanish dramatist Garcia Lorca used to write great roles for women because, he said, there were much better actresses than actors in Spain. Is that part of it as well?

PA: Absolutely. I know what Lorca said more than 60 years ago, and it's still true. Maybe it's the culture, maybe it's the cliché of Latino machismo, but the Mediterranean male character is more dull than the female character. Women are more surprising and they have fewer prejudices. Perhaps it's because they were condemned to be silent for centuries, so they create inside them a much richer world. In many cases, that is true - you can find good actresses of every age in Spain, but not actors.

MD: And you've got actresses from very different generations in this film - you've got Chus Lampreave as Aunt Paula; Carmen Maura, who's not afraid to play 60 and an even older woman, as when she first appears in the movie with very grey hair; and Blanca Portillo, appearing in a film of yours for the very first time - it's a revelatory performance from her. You're very good at creating the ensemble cast rather than focusing on a star performer.

PA: I was very lucky with the six actresses in this - they behaved like a family when we were shooting, and the camera took to that, the camera is very sensitive to that. We would rehearse a lot and they were living together for months - so it was very impressive that, even though they are all very different physically, for example Lola Dueñas and Penélope, they even looked like sisters. They reminded me all of the time of my own two sisters, who are also very different physically. They looked like a real family.

MD: Your sisters were advisers or consultants on the film, weren't they? So this was very much a family film in many ways.

PA: Absolutely. A lot of things were inspired by events in my childhood. This is a contemporary film, but things haven't changed much in the village where I was born. During the shoot, I would call my sisters and ask, "What did our mother say in this situation?" and they would tell me whole lines. They told me what they did in the kitchen because they're always making food or serving food. So all my research was done by talking to them on the telephone, because they keep the culture of my childhood alive.

MD: And the gastronomy, too, because the food is shown with such a relish in this film.

PA: All the food that appears in the film was real and made by my sisters, and eaten by the crew.

MD: Your mother was present in your earlier films - she actually acted in some of them - but you've said that she was very present for you in this one as well.

PA: Yes. At least half the dialogues between the women in this film are directly inspired by conversations I had with my mother. Something that might not have as much resonance for English-language audiences is that they speak in an old Castilian, which is very different from academic Castilian, but is very much a feature of La Mancha. All of that mode of speaking I remember from my mother.

MD: This seems like a good moment to open this out to the audience.

Question 1: Wonderful film. Could you talk a little bit more about the rehearsal period, and the incredible ensemble spirit that you managed to build in the cast?

PA: Well, I've already said quite a lot about it but never mind. Each actor is a very different person, and each one has to be directed very differently. So I've spoken about how I worked with Penélope on her character. With the others I worked on the musicality of the dialogue, which as I've explained is very different because it's Manchegan. Then, depending on the actor, the rehearsals went one way or another. With Carmen, she's an actor that I know very well and we'd worked together a lot in the past. As soon as we'd fixed the physical appearance of her character, we didn't rehearse much - she just wanted to get on and shoot it. With Lola Dueñas, it was very different - she went to my village, spent time there and spoke to the women there about the themes relating to this film, so by the time we started rehearsals for the film, she had already transformed herself into that character. With Blanca Portillo, it was very different again because she doesn't have much experience of working in film - she's largely a theatre actor, so she's used to working in a grand arena, on a large stage, where the gestures have to be larger. It's very different when you're working in close-up. But even though film and theatre are very different disciplines, Blanca very quickly understood what cinematic time and space means and involves. I really wanted her to be that lonely, neighbour figure, and she connected with that immediately. She'd just come from a role where she played a priest during the Inquisition - her hair had been shaved for that role. Originally I'd wanted to put a wig on her for the film, but we grew so used to her hairstyle during rehearsals that in the end that's what we opted to have in the film. It was very important also that they have in front of them the original characters from which I'd taken my inspiration for those roles - so for the wake and cemetery scenes, we hired women from the town. Even though these women were not used to being in a film, of having all the paraphernalia of a film crew around them, they actually forgot that they were being filmed. So there were moments when, for example, at the wake, when Agustina is explaining to Sole what's happening, they were actually intruding and saying, "No, don't say that. You'll only upset her and make her cry." So when Lola/Sole does cry, they said, "Well, I told you." It was very interesting - it was like there was a mirror between the women and the actresses, the one reflecting the other. There was a moment when reality and fiction absolutely fused. And that was very moving. As for Yohana Cobo, who plays Paula, the granddaughter, I did a lot of tests with her. But what I needed, and this is something Yohana has in herself, was a glance, something in the eyes that spoke of pain. I don't know how she can have the experience to have that kind of look, but I wanted her to be present in many scenes but not participate.

MD: You wanted her to be a witness.

PA: Yes, and everything really affects her but she has to be listening in silence. That's very difficult. I didn't know how to show that, but then I saw that she listens very well. You might think to play someone just listening would be easy, but it's not at all. So I liked very much how she would be present, like a witness, and I decided to leave her like that.

Question 2: What were the main changes between the script you started rehearsals with and the finished film?

PA: I'm going to go with Answer C, which is the shortest, since Answer A is very long-winded, although very amusing. Well, in the first version, the guy who owns the restaurant was a very important character. The tone was very different, too - it was much more of a comedy. So I had to create problems for her, to keep the action going once the restaurant owner had disappeared, so what better plot than to get rid of her husband, so that she would then have to dispose of his body. But to achieve that, she had to have the help of the neighbours. And that's why we gave new importance to the roles of Raimunda's neighbours. When the film crew arrives, each day the neighbours would bring produce from where they came from, so there'd be a new gastronomic menu each day. Each evening, the neighbours would be entertaining the film crew, performing and singing, and gradually this club became the hot spot of Madrid, the place to be. So this made it very difficult for Raimunda to get rid of the body. But then when the script was at a very advanced stage, I wanted to give her an additional difficulty, which was the arrival of her mother. When her mother arrives, she really devours the action as I mentioned earlier. What I realised was that I was much more interested in her relationship with her mother than with her neighbours. So that whole notion of this very poor part of southern Madrid becoming a hotspot, almost like in a musical comedy - that all shifted. I left only the minimum there that would help Raimunda to get rid of the body.

Question 3: How was it working with Carmen Maura after such a long time? Was it as easy as it was in the 80s? Or did you have to establish a new relationship?

PA: It's been 18 years since we last worked together. The last time was on Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. It was a very hard shoot and we fought. Then we spent two or three years without speaking to each other. And that's when the Berlin wall fell. Soon after that I was at an awards ceremony and I had a piece of the Berlin wall in my hands and I made a public declaration, saying that if this symbol of hate could come down, then surely our friendship could be mended. And that solved it. So I'd been keen to work with her again for a while, and when I wrote this role, a character who was the same age as Carmen, I thought of her immediately. There was also the worry about whether our past chemistry would return, because there was something miraculous about that. But as soon as we started shooting, we realised that nothing of that chemistry had been lost over the years.

MD: We have time for one more question.

Question 4: I'm very aware that in all your films, quite often the strong female character is seen wearing red at specific points in the film. So whenever I watch one of your films, I almost wait for it - to see a red dress, or red cardigan or red shoe. It's like a treasure almost. Is that intentional or is that just me?

PA: The colour red is present in all my films and my films on the whole are very colourful. I use it in a very sensual way - irrespective of cultural differences it is a very significant colour. In Spain it represents hate, love and fire, blood. In Japan, it is the colour of those condemned to death. So it's the colour of humanity. Many times they ask me about the use of colour in my films. And my mother, I only realised this after making a number of my films, had been dressed in mourning for about 35 years, including the time that I was conceived and born. So from about the age of three, when she lost her own father, she had been dressed in black. So when I was born, it was almost like a response to having to wear that drab colour for more than 30 years.

MD: I'll remind you, Penélope's wearing black at the moment.

PA: But my mother didn't wear Chanel.

[audience laughs]

MD: Before I finish, can I ask you if you have a future collaboration planned? Will we see the Almodóvar and Cruz show on our screens again in a couple of years?

PA: Oh yes, I hope so.

PC: I hope so too.

PA: I am sure we will be shooting together again. For the moment, I'm promoting this movie around the world and don't have much time to write. But I have two stories at different stages of development. In both of them, there's a character for her. [Cruz rubs her hands in glee; audience laughs] I have to finish the script and like the script first, because if I don't have the right spirit I can't say that I am going to make this movie. But for the moment, she is absolutely in my imagination, and when I'm writing, I'm thinking about her.

Question 5 (in Spanish): Pedro, I have no question. I would just like to give you a kiss.

PA: Why don't you blow me a kiss?

Questioner: No, I want to give you a kiss in person.

PA: Okay then, come on. It's like an award.

[Young man from audience runs onstage and kisses PA on the mouth and steals a quick embrace]